Presumably this photo shows the train that would take our adventurers to the Fair; notice the lady with the nice hat and the coat with the mink stole. She shouldn'ta stole it. The seats look just like the school bus seats that have not changed for 50 years. I see a "no smoking" sign, which surprises me; it must have been there for safety reasons, since so many folks smoked everywhere in those days.
Here's the view of the Fair that you'd see as you exited the train station. It must be chillier than it looks, judging from all of the coats and hats (not much wind, fortunately). Way in the distance you can see such iconic Fair attractions as the IBM pavilion (the giant egg), the dome of General Electric's "Progressland", and the just-visible, spiky Coca Cola pavilion. Nearer to us is the dome of the World's Fair pavilion ("the Fair's major indoor assembly hall"), and the RCA pavilion just to our right.
Here's a rare photo from inside the RCA pavilion. Check out that monstrous color television camera! Throughout the Fair you could watch live broadcasts of various acts as they performed in RCA's "working TV station". That Ricky Nelson clone is serenading his girl with the beautiful love song, "Surfin' Bird".
AAAAA! Sorry if this dinosaur scared you. You would have found him over at the Sinclair Oil exhibit. Because when you fill up your car with gas, you are actually filling it up with squished dinosaurs! It's true, I looked it up on the internets.
I'm sure our visitors spent many hours at the fair, but I wanted to include this neat photo of the ride home. It's dark outside, and the train is full of weary New Yorkers, a few New Jersey-ites, and at least one Delaweenian.
I gots lots more Fair photos to share!
These are great. I love the ride home shot!
ReplyDeleteHow fun, thanks for the train ride!
ReplyDeleteThat color TV camera is HUGE, for some odd reason I want one....
Absolutely fantastic. The photographer must have been shooting with some pretty high speed film since it looks like he went out of his way to try some low light shots. Any idea what kind of film he was using? The pic from the GE TV studio is really great. Very hard to gauge the exposure on that because of the intense studio lights and the darkness of the camera area to the left. I'm sure it was helped by some expert Major Pepperidge restoration! The train shots are great as well. Love that one of all the commuters absorbed in their newspapers going home. Looking forward to seeing more of these beautiful images.
ReplyDeleteI'll take Disneyland's Asphalt Desert to New York's rolling cattle pen any day. That subway car looks like war surplus.
ReplyDeleteI thought they were called Delawieners.
ReplyDeletevery cool....love a day at the fair!
ReplyDeletethat very tall skinny doo-dad at the entrance looks like a house of cards made out of directors' chairs or something! never saw it before, nor the TV studio.
wish we could read the ads on the bus...thanks for great photos....
"I got lots more Fair photos to share!"~~~~YIPPEE! ;D
Great post, I like the "scary" dinosaur and the ride home photo the best...great stuff, thanks Major!
ReplyDeleteInteriors of train cars and the NYWF. What more can you ask for. Great pics Major. Fantastic!
ReplyDeleteVery nice! That's an angle of that dinosaur that I hadn't seen before.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a long time since I rode it, but I do believe Cordelia Knott's Steamer was gasoline powered. I remember it being very clean, and you just can't keep a steam engine clean no matter how hard you try.
ReplyDeleteInside shots are fairly rare. If there are more, please post. High speed color film was quite new at the time. More on the RCA pavilion is at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nywf64.com/rca01.shtml
Am I the only one who got a kick out of the fact that the No Smoking sign is right next to (and much smaller than) an ad promoting Lark cigarettes?
ReplyDelete